it is may Mental Health Awareness Month and we’ll be running several features focused on how video games of all kinds have helped us through times when we’ve struggled with mental health.
Today, Richard shares how racing games helped him bounce back during a tough time…
I tense up every time I turn a corner in F-Zero, clenching my jaw as I turn the hairpin, narrowly missing the wall and glancing at the other pilot. I fingers grip the buttons of the Super Nintendo pad almost as if I were actually piloting Captain Falcon’s machine, hurtling through the streets of Port Town at 400 km/h. All I can think about is crossing that finish line before that computer does. That’s all I have time to think about.
Between races, there’s a lot of junk in my brain. Cascading anxiety due to the quick and sudden end of a six-year relationship; shame about failing to find steady work after being fired from my first full-time job; the embarrassment of having to return to family when job opportunities have dried up in the pandemic; anxiety over the gruesome details of a true crime story I spent months reporting for an investigative journalism podcast.
But when the pilots take to the starting grid for the next race, and the machines whirr in anticipation, every other thought is silenced. Gearing up for another round of futuristic motorsports, my worries fade as the track blurs under my little Blue Falcon.
Even when I’m sick, I play video games. And during this period of depression, which dragged me down in the first months of 2022, racing games were all I could play. I’ve poured dozens of hours into the Switch’s meager racing offerings, from the original F-Zero on the SNES app to Nintendo Switch Online, to GRID Autosport, SEGA AGES Virtua Racing, and Rush Rally Origins. I raced the time trial in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe—beating both the 150cc and 200cc records—to get those golden tires. I did all of this because those digital racetracks seemed to be the only places where I wouldn’t be reminded of a failed relationship or a vivid police report of a very real rape and murder.
I improvement could be measured in seconds, in better and better placings at each Grand Prix.
I don’t even like cars that much. I don’t watch professional racing, nor did I play many racing games regularly before this brief obsession. But my supports weren’t doing it for me. Pleasant games reminded me of my ex. Puzzles leave too much room for idle thinking. And the action games I wanted to play—No More Heroes 3, Elden Ring, even Dead Cells—were too violent for me. I couldn’t stand the sound or image of blood splatter, even with the blood and gore settings turned off in games that offered it.
Racing games seemed like a safe haven because I knew so little about them, yet they reached deep into the history of video games. I could learn something—always a good way to distract myself—but I could also sink my teeth into a relatively non-violent genre that would provide all the challenge of the solid action games I love.
So F-Zero seemed like a good place to start. I used to casually play F-Zero X on the Wii Virtual Console and try F-Zero GX on the GameCube. But I never took the time to understand the original game.
The debut entry in the series is a surprisingly deep racer, as anyone who’s spent any serious time in the Battle Royale adaptation of F-Zero 99 knows. maddening curves, mines and magnets that require careful use of brakes and sliding buttons.
when the pilots come on the grid for the next race, the machines whirring in anticipation, every other thought is silenced
The more I rolled around Mute City, Death Wind, and Fire Field, the more I realized that racing games, like speedrunning, are a numbers game, trial and error, and tiny split-second decisions. Both are about optimization—perfecting those racing lines—and the sheer thrill of going really, really fast. When I’m chasing each corner and running past rivals while wasting milliseconds of each lap, I enter a kind of fragile state of flow where I know anything can go wrong at any moment.
For me, at that point in my life, the games that seemed dangerous, the games where I could fail catastrophically, were valuable. In the simulation-style racing GRID, with the appropriate options enabled, cars experience serious wear and tear causing the vehicles to lean one way or another throughout the race; go off the track in F-Zero and the machines just explode. But mitigating those failures, learning from my mistakes and rising above them to do better next time helped me regain some confidence when I felt like everything had gone wrong. I improvement could be measured in seconds, in better and better placings at each Grand Prix.
When my depression became too much for me to handle on my own, my psychiatric nurse recommended that I be admitted to partial hospitalization, a carefully curated outpatient mental health program.
I learned so much about myself there and even left with a new diagnosis that helped me switch to medication and behavioral therapies that changed my life for the better.
But I still consider racing games to be a key part of my recovery. Not only were they entertaining – which is quite important – they reinforced the messages that the health professionals at the hospital were conveying to me. Change is gradual and I have to acknowledge and even celebrate small victories every day, especially when something as simple as getting out of bed seems impossible. And crucially, mental health is holistic: the health of the mind is closely related to the well-being of the body. Sleep, exercise and diet affect how my brain works, whether I like it or not.
Even if I corner too hard in Virtua Racing and waste seconds on the ticking timer, there’s always the next corner, the next race, the next day. And the next time I pull that move, and the time after that, I won’t take it for granted. I’ve learned to do it, and even those fleeting moments are worth cheering for.
